死後の恋
Love After Death
A ruined former soldier tells the narrator of a love beyond death.
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Sample: three-line reading
Each word has its meaning in this sentence underneath, and each sentence has a full translation. Read the original and glance down only when you need to.
About the book
"Shigo no Koi" (Love After Death) is a short story by detective fiction writer Kyūsaku Yumeno, published in the October 1928 issue of the magazine Shin Seinen. Its opening concerns a down-and-out former Russian officer telling "I" about a love after death.
Cultural notes (selection)
Background a translation can’t carry: social roles, history and allusions. While reading, tap “Note” at the end of a sentence to see them all.
An old Japanese name for Vladivostok, written with the kanji "浦塩". From 1918 to 1922 Japan sent troops to Siberia and stationed forces there; the Japanese soldiers and army transport corps mentioned in the text are set against this background.
The Romanov dynasty, the imperial family that ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917. Nicholas II, the last tsar, and his entire family were executed in 1918. The "末路" (fall) in the text refers to this, and it forms the historical basis for the story of "死後の恋" as the speaker calls it.
A Russian unit of distance, the versta (верста); one versta is about 1.07 kilometres. The "十二露里（约三里）" in the text is the author's own conversion: since one Japanese ri is about 3.9 kilometres, twelve versts come to a little over three ri.
About the author
Yumeno Kyūsaku (4 January 1889 – 11 March 1936) was a Japanese author whose pen name roughly means "a person who always dreams"; his real name was Sugiyama Yasumichi. He wrote detective novels and also worked as a Zen priest, post office director and sub-lieutenant, and is known for his avant-gardism and surrealistic, wildly imaginative and bizarre narratives.
Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: 死後の恋 (CC BY-SA)
How the glosses are made
Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.
FAQ
Is this the original text?
Yes. The library holds the opening section of the public-domain original, taken from 青空文库.
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This one is marked “Intermediate”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.
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